[yves]

hi everybody

I'm trying to get a decent glass material but so far I failed
miserably. o matter what I do, the glass simply isn't reflective
enough... has anybody managed to create a realistic glass?
So far in all architecture renderings I've seen, I almost always
thought that something was wrong with the glass. I'm not using
ags by the way...

best
yves

[Bubbaloo]

Here's what I do for architectural renderings:
Use ags and increase the nd of the reflective layer to around 2 or 3.

[yves]

hi bubaloo

thank you for that tipp. seems to work .
am I right that ags is kind of a fast way to
display glass, and that sunlight can penetrate
the windows?

best
yves

[yves]

it gets better with your help, but still: glass in bright sunlight just is *not* transparent. one of the very first things you learn in arch school. it looks just so weird...

[Bubbaloo]

Why don'r you post some renders?

[yves]

I'll do that tomorrow, enough for today. but don't you share my view? Maybe I'm biased, but I always thought that reflections are very dominant in daylight, something I could reproduce very well in cinema4d, but not in maxwell. this might be though simply because I don't know maxwell's material system as well.

just as an example: How would you create a highly reflective glass (for example coated glass for sun protection). I tried all afternoon but no matter what I did, I just couldn't do it (coating doesn't seem to be the right thing here).

best and thanks for your help, I appreciate it.
yves

[yves]

ok, stupid me... I just realised I can do exactly what I want with a simple two layer material. one for transparency and one for reflection. I kind of assumed I could put both into one layer. now it looks exactly the way I want.

As a comparison:

AGS glass with higher nd value:


my two layer glass mat:


thanks
yves

[Fernando Tella]

This is my perfect glass (perfect for me, of course) for buildings' windows; notice the additive mode:



One layer like glass but with black transmittance (opaque) and one ghost layer to manage the transparency. It's usually clean at SL10, it gets rid of the refractive part which slows materials and has fresnel effect (Nd= 1.55).

[Bubbaloo]

Come on, name your layers...
Big pet peeve...

[Fernando Tella]

Come on, name your layers...
Big pet peeve...

[T_RNLDesign]

What I would like to know how to do better is controlling the level of reflectance as the viewing angle changes. I can get glass to look right from one angle but either its too reflective or not transparent enough as the angle changes

[lebbeus]

I believe this is what an .r2 file helps with

[Mihai]

It depends a lot on what kind of glass you're trying to recreate. A glass facade for a building isn't usually just 'glass', has different kinds of special coatings so you could mix a base glass material with a solid reflective material (with it's ND not too high, about 3-6, otherwise the reflections will appear too strong even when viewed straight on).